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Sunday, December 11, 2011

Tasmanian Devils

It seems that the Tasmanian Devil is vastly misunderstood. This park ranger treats them like teddy bears, and the little creatures talk to him in much the same way that Milo talks to us. It turns out that this park ranger helped to hand raise these Tasmanian Devils and they recognise his scent. However, he has to make sure that he uses exactly the same shampoo and body wash. Else, his little Devils won't recognise him, and may attack. That is a scary thought because the Tasmanian Devil generates the strongest bite per unit body mass of any mammal. This surpasses even a lion's bite. It is this powerful bite that helps it to take down wallabies 3 to 4 times larger than itself.

Still, despite its strong jaws, the Tasmanian Devil prefers to scavenge rather than hunt. They're the vacuum cleaners of the Tasmanian bushland. Whilst they fight each other a lot, they don't kill each other (unlike humans). However, they will eat another Tassie Devil found dead in the bush, because meat is meat, and it is their job to scavenge.

We later observed it feeding on a piece of wallaby meat with a large bone in it. The little fur ball ate the bone like it was keropok. The park ranger had some dead yellow chicks in the food bucket. To the Tassie Devil, that must have been soft and creamy ice cream. It is said that when people go missing in the bush without a trace, they could have been cleaned up by the Tassie Devil after they had collapsed and died. The Tassie Devil eats everything... bones and all...

10 comments:

Good day, Petunia...now I know considerably more about Tasmanian Devils than I did before reading your post. People revile scavengers but they serve their purpose and apparently do their job very well!

that is so true, they also have one of the loudest screams of any mammal, i watched a documentary about it :D and do you know that Tasmanian devils store fat in their tail, so an unhealthy devil has a skinny tail...

come check out my blog! I made a Tasmanian Devil in art class! I hope you like it...

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